“The fact is,” he said, with hesitation, “that I was on my way to Italy on business”—— Here he paused, remembering what Batty had said of an interest in the Eastwoods. “On family business. I had something to do—of importance; and I have been—detained here.”
This euphemism delighted his companion. He gave a horse-laugh, which affected Frederick’s nerves. “Yes; you have been—detained here: I understand. By Jove, you are fun,” said this appreciative listener.
Frederick took no notice of the vulgar outburst. Now that he had business in hand he could be clear enough. He laid bare his necessities to this strange and novel adviser. There is no telling—as men in Frederick Eastwood’s condition easily find out—in what strange regions money, and the inclination to lend it, may be found. Nothing could be less promising than this coarse Englishman, who had thrust himself into the young man’s path so much against his will; and yet in this unlikely quarter salvation was to be found. We need not concern ourselves here about Mr. Batty’s motives.
“I thought you looked too much a swell to be a commercial gent, sir,” he exclaimed later; “but when I picked up that card you might have knocked me down with a feather. Eastwoods has always been the height of quality in my eyes. I have been born and bred on their lands; and as for good-will to serve ’em—here’s a way to prove it.”
Frederick was no neophyte, to put the unbounded confidence of a boy in these fine speeches; but he knew that there are a great many kinds of money-lenders, and that there are people in the world who are to be influenced, even to the supreme length of opening their purses, by a good name and a well-known address. Besides, after all there was no great risk attendant upon Batty’s generosity. A man in a public office—a man with a character—is not likely to allow himself to be ruined for a matter of fifty pounds, especially when he has a mother full of innocent credulity to fall back upon. Thus the bargain was made, which was to Frederick, as soon as it became certain, an insignificant transaction. The moment he had signed the note and got the money, his despair of an hour ago seemed incredible to him, and all his objections to Batty recurred in double force.
“If you are ever down my way, I’ll hope you’ll eat a bit of mutton with me,” said the hospitable usurer: “not salmis and vol-à-vent, Mr. Eastwood, for we ain’t up to that; but sound English mutton, with a glass of good wine to wash it down. And I’ll show you a stable that will make your mouth water.”
Frederick, who had become stiff again, bowed and thanked him from a mountain-top of superiority—and it was Batty’s hope to spend another evening in his society which determined him on the virtuous step of quitting Paris that night.
What was his brain busy about as he rolled out of the wicked, seductive city, where all vice betakes itself with the hope of being tempted, in that chill spring evening, between the lamps and the stars? His head was confused with all he had passed through. The fumes of his “pleasures” were still in it, mingled with the disgust which is inevitable, but which floats away still more quickly than the fumes of the “pleasures.” The thrill of his hairbreadth escape was also vibrating through him; but a man of Frederick Eastwood’s habits soon gets used to that thrill of escape. He was concocting and putting in order a reasonable way of accounting for his acquaintance with such a man as Batty, should it ever become known to his friends. All at once, while he was arranging his bargain with Batty, this had flashed upon his mind. He would not conceal that, having a day or two to pass in Paris, he had determined on going to a purely French hotel, to escape the mass of travelling English who fill up every corner; with the view of seeing Frenchmen as they are, he had gone to this obscure hostelrie; and there, by an odd chance, he had found this rough Englishman stranded, not knowing the language—thrown, as it were, upon his charity. “A scamp, of course, and thoroughly objectionable; but what could one do?” Frederick said to himself, as he made up his story. His story seemed to himself so satisfactory that it really accounted for the acquaintance, even to his own mind. He recalled to recollection that he had been obliged to interpret for his unpleasant compatriot, and the fiction gradually consolidated into fact. He believed it himself long before he had reached the Marseilles steamboat which was the next step in his hurried way.
CHAPTER VI.
PISA.
Frederick had left Paris between the lamps and the stars, as I have said, on a chilly night, when the darkness and confusion in his own mind agreed better with the mist and rolling steam that made a cloud about the train as it dashed into the darkness, than with the serene celestial lights which tried in vain to penetrate that veil of vapour. He came into the harbour at Leghorn again between stars and lamps, but this time in the blue-green dawn of an Italian spring morning, too early for any stir except that which attended the arrival of the steamer. Do people still have that long promenade sur l’eau through the green sea basin from point to point before they are allowed to land, and be subjected to the final examination at the Dogana? I suppose all that has been changed with so many other things, with the abolition of passports, and other hindrances to the traveller. Frederick Eastwood did not now feel so hurried as when he was in Paris. He had arranged how he was to write home, and to telegraph to the office, begging for the extra week’s leave which was inevitable. He wrote his mother a long letter, telling her how he had been seized with “unpleasant symptoms” in Paris, but would not send her word of it lest he should alarm her; how he had managed to come on to Leghorn, taking the journey easily, and really had not suffered as he feared he would; how, on the whole, he was much better; how he intended to proceed to Pisa in the evening after a rest; and how within a week they might expect to see him back with his cousin. “Don’t be uneasy about me,” he said, “I am really a great deal better. I feel sure I shall now get home quite comfortably; but, as you remarked before I left, I was not well when I started—too much confinement, I suppose”—— I don’t attempt to explain this other fiction which he put forth with perfect gravity, and without much feeling of guiltiness. “Unpleasant symptoms” might mean anything, and I fear that from schoolboy days the excuses given at home are not judged by a very high standard of truthfulness. Frederick’s conscience did not trouble him much on this subject. He telegraphed to his chief at the office, announcing his detention by illness, without entering into any particulars as to where that illness had occurred, and claiming so many days’ extension of leave as would re-establish his health for the journey home. He felt ill enough, it must be allowed, after all he had gone through—ill enough almost to feel justified in the report he gave of his ailing condition—“seedy,” as he would have called it, to the last degree. He could not eat anything, he slept badly, his lips were parched, his hand hot and tremulous, and his looks bore him unimpeachable testimony, better than a medical certificate. Yet he felt rather happy in his unhappiness, as he rested and tried to eat a little minestra at the hotel at Leghorn. It was not so good as the bouillon he would have got in Paris, or the beef-tea at home, but it was all he was capable of. In the evening he proceeded on his short railway journey to Pisa—and on the way his mind, if not his body, mended rapidly. It was again dark when he arrived. He went to one of the hotels on the Lung’ Arno, and took a feeble walk in the evening to see the place, though so little could be seen. He had never been in Italy before, and though the circumstances were such as to damp enthusiasm, there was in Frederick’s mind a certain new-born freshness of a man returned to the paths of duty which we can compare to nothing but the feelings of one recovering from an illness. It was over; he felt languid, weak, but good. He had turned his back alike on temptation and upon sin. He was convalescent. Now there is no real moral excellence in being convalescent even after a fever; but that sufferer must have had unkindly tending and little love about him in his malady, who does not feel that it is good of him to get better, and that he has done something for which all his friends are justly grateful to him. Frederick, though he had no friends to be grateful, felt precisely in this condition. He felt good. In Paris he had felt miserable, mournful, and what he called penitent—that is he had felt that pleasure carried too far ends by becoming unpleasant, and that it costs very dear, and that the amount of satisfaction to be got out of it is scarcely proportioned to the outlay. This mood had lasted during the greater part of his journey. But after a man has so accounted for his misfortunes as Frederick had done, and has got the means of beginning again, and feels himself clear of the toils for the time being, such a mood does not last very long; and by the time he reached Pisa he had got fully into the convalescent state, and felt good. While his dinner was preparing he took a walk down by the side of Arno, in which once more the stars above and the lamps below were reflecting themselves with serene composure, the lights of heaven asserting no proud superiority over the lights of earth; and then turned aside to that wonderful group of buildings of which everybody has heard. Nothing in all Italy belongs to our childhood like that leaning tower. Frederick looked up at it, bending towards him through the darkness, and recollected pictures in books at home which his mother had shown him of evenings when he stood by her knee in pinafores, before “life” began. His reminiscences gave the softest domestic turn to his mind, and made him feel still more good than before. Even in the dark there were still some beggars about, flitting out of corners at the sight of the stranger, and he emptied his pocket among them, giving them francs and half francs with a wild liberality which increased tenfold the numbers of these waiters upon Providence next evening in the Piazza del Duomo. There were fitful gleams of moonlight coming now and then from out a mass of clouds, and sending broad beams of momentary glory behind and between the different buildings. Frederick was awed and impressed, as well as touched and softened. This was like the higher light of religious feeling coming in to elevate the domestic piety to which his heart had been suddenly opened by recollection. Thus impressed and ameliorated the convalescent walked back to his hotel to dinner, and was able to eat something, the reader will be glad to hear.